It all started when a friend of mine told me about an 18 year old he’d written a house loan for that had made $500,000 in one year with affiliate programs by creating MySpace layouts. Apparently these layouts were so in demand that all we had to do was create a few layouts, put them up on a website and profit. I headed out, bought a book on CSS and got started. As I was chugging along I decided to take a close look at the site that we were getting our inspiration from. This was in the 2002 - 2003 timeframe when Google’s AdSense was really taking off. What I found was that the site was completely gaming the system. Having become an a Google AdSense publisher he was using this PPC affiliate system to create his income. The site owner was somehow serving advertisements completely unrelated to MySpace, social networks, layouts or anything else having to do with the content. Instead ads were appearing for mortgage, real-estate and other extremely expensive and profitable keywords.

Upon further investigation, I found out that the site owner had registered sites that pertained to real-estate, mortgages, law firms, etc. and simply had keyword heavy content on these sites. The sites had strange, URLs and didn’t come up very high in search terms. The ads on these sites were being generated by Google AdSense and then he had written a script to copy the AdSense portion to his high traffic site, thus generating much higher income per click than one would with relevant links. Since our site was following the terms of service for AdSense and not cheating the system, we were only getting pennies per click which wasn’t ever going to add up to much. To this day, however, this remains one of our most successful sites in terms of visitors. Proof that just following the “hot topic” of the moment can certainly add up to a large amount of visitors, even if you’re not in the first page of search results.

Now we were on a mission to find something else to work on. We wanted a big payout, something that was popular and something we had interest in. Poker was always of interest to me so we decided to create a site that was focused on blogging about online and real life poker. This site required a great deal of effort. In order to gain new visitors and maintain a high ranking we had to post a blog entry daily. This meant we had to recruit a staff of volunteer and revenue share bloggers to participate. In the beginning we were doing great, right out the door we were making money via Google’s AdSense program. Soon, however, we were instructed that we not able to use AdSense on our site since it was unrelated to poker. We switched to AdBrite and watched our revenue go from a few dollars per day to pennies. Motivation was lost for all those involved, as much as we pushed each other to continue writing and increase visitors the dismal return was too low. The site was sold to one of the original founders and has since basically fell into disrepair.
Onto the next project . . . we decided to create lots of websites covering many different areas and thus giving us many different areas to cover. We could then refine and focus on which areas were most profitable. These would all be using AdSense again, and would all be “safe” areas that wouldn’t violate the terms of service. We sincerely felt there had to be an honest way to make quick easy money on the internet.

This project never took off either, unfortunately we’d lost sight of one very important ingredient for any type of success - a lack of passion. We were writing topics that had nothing to do with what we were interested in. In the end, there’s one really successful group of individuals making money on the internet with affiliate programs.

These are the bloggers that give advice and inspiration to those who want to make quick and easy money on the internet. By publishing advice with suggestions on how to start up your own site and sign up for affiliate programs they have you doing all the actual legwork. These sites are very well done and full of factual information - but they’re essentially at the top of the marketing chain. By providing the tools and infrastructure for you to create your own site, they build their business by enabling the entire affiliate marketing industry. Everyone else is simply going to do “ok” - but real success in this area involves enabling and defining the industry.

There’s nothing wrong with the the affiliate marketing blogging community, the strategy used is quite simple. Basically you’ll see them using the most recent, bleeding edge technology to teach people new to affiliate marketing how to use technology that is one or two years old. This puts you, the new marketeer, in a distinct disadvantage since you’re only gaining information that is already old hat. Today I was taking a look at a site that was using video blogging to teach people how to write blogs . . . does that mean it’s time to go video? Sure seems to be the current trend. Anyhow . . . I think I’m done chasing this rabbit . . .

Vancouver, as before, was a very fun town. We went to a boat party with live music on a large party boat out in the middle of Vancouver harbor. It was awesome - we planned on leaving after the party but decided it would be better to stick around for another day and recover.With my usual degree of planning we stayed for yet another additional day - this time on the south end of town on Broadway. This was pretty uneventful, there was a big party going on across town but the cab fare was too expensive and we’d been over at Earl’s drinking margaritas so there was no way I was going to drive across Vancouver. Staying near the hotel we did a little bit of a pub crawl on Broadway - there was some awful metal music at the hotel bar and there’s Earl’s across the street

Now for the real fun . . . crossing the border back to the states!

I haven’t done this since before 9/11, and had no idea what to expect. As we neared the border patrol point I noticed a new building had been constructed, quite a bit larger than the original little windowed building you pulled up to before. I noticed these strange devices mounted all around which I found out were designed to scan your passport as you entered so they would know who was in the car before pulling up. Do ID cards have RFIDs in them too?

So . . . how have our freedoms, etc. changed as a result of 9/11? Read along . . .

We were asked to pull the car into a parking bay at the border checkpoint and come inside and answer some questions. We were told to remove the key from the ignition and leave the car unlocked.

While we were being detained there was no restroom and no drinking water.

We were told to empty our pockets onto the counter, i had a mint tin in my pockets - I was told to open the container. The officer removed a single mint and placed it on the counter as if to test it.

We were repeatedly told it would just be a few minutes.

The officers held our identification and made us fill out an immigration form.

We were questioned together first, then individually.
The CBP officers stated that they would be strip searching us, and to avoid this we just needed to turn over “the drugs”.

They asked what drugs were in the car and where they were located - to which I told them i did not know of any drugs being in the car.

They asked if my friend did drugs while in Canada - to which I answered that I am not his keeper.

They brought my friend’s bag inside the holding pen and asked whos it was.

They then asked how much money was in the bag - he answered correctly.

After an hour and a half we were released from detention.

Everything in my car had been searched through, by hand presumably by the CBP officers.

They knew we were US citizens.

It was obvious we were not “terrorists”.

It was nothing more than harrassment.

We were NEVER arrested or told why we were being detained.

We were NEVER told that the vehicle would be searched.

I NEVER gave permission to search the vehicle nor my person.

I was late to an important event in Seattle as a result of the detention. (Continued below . . .)

So, this is the increased security at the border? Detain a couple of guys who headed into Vancouver for the weekend to enjoy the nightlife? The border is one of those places where you have no rights, but certainly an amount of respect is due. Did anyone gain from the this? No. Do I have a increased perception of safety at our border? No. Was I treated with respect? No. Did they find “the drugs”? No.
To be more effective, maybe the CBP should focus on catching terrorists and people sneaking through holes in the border. Maybe the focus shouldn’t be on whether or not a couple of guys in their mid-twenties have a joint in the car and more focused on whether the guy walking through the forest a few miles away is carrying plans to carry out some terrorist plot. There were more CBP agents stuffed in the Peace Arch Border Crossing detention area than cattle in a Wal Mart beef supplier’s feed pen.

See Picture on Flickr

Originally uploaded by kingjosh.

Salina, Kira and I escaped the summer heat today by making a trip out to Indian Beach in Ecola State Park. I was pleasantly surprised at the reasonable price of an Oregon State Parks pass at just $25/year! The beach was awesome and was originally discovered by Lewis and Clark on their expedition way back in the day. Now it’s home to many tourists and some surfers. The road to get to the beach is obnoxious and quite scary in an SUV! It is really curvey and narrow. We made it safely there and back though . . .

Daily Show on violent video games

My last content post talked about getting laid off from 3Dlabs from my position as a Developer Relations Engineer.   I took about a month to interview with various tech companies and accepted a position with Intel Corporation.  I was relocated to Beaverton Oregon and am now living in the Pacific Northwest!  This has been a dream of mine since I was about 15 years old, and I’m finally here!

I always thought I’d move to Seattle, however I decided on the Portland area due to its more reasonable cost of living and its liberal population.  I’m truly impressed at the progressive thought in this town and the people here are amazing.  Working at Intel is great too, I’m doing exciting work and meeting some truly incredible people in the Industry.  I never thought I would take a position at a huge corporation but in the end its all about having the ability to be creative and contribute to truly innovative technology - as long as I’m working on something I’m passionate about . . . I’m happy

Since moving here I’ve been to Portland a few times, it is an awesome city.  Beaverton, where I work and live, is boring and reminds me of Littleton.  My plan is to move to downtown Portland once my lease is up in a few more months.  Being able to go to the coast without flying is a huge bonus too.  I drove to Seaside and Cannon Beach and was really impressed by the beautiful Oregon coastline.  Hopefully I’ll be able to get out there more!